The Flight Defense
by Anticipating Boxes
Summary: Fourteen miles down the road he appeared out of thin air on the back seat, coughing blood. It was a wonder he had any blood left to cough up. It stained his shirts – front and back, oozing from the gaping wound in his chest. Slight AU, spoilers for 5.19
1. Chapter 1

**Notes**: This is my shiny, happy universe where I am Boss. We'll call it a small sidestep of an AU. Also, this is technically Gen, but also technically pre-slash - you can read it as either without issues, as I've tried to keep my 'shipping as quiet as possible (right up 'til the end where it will smash you with a mallet to the face).

Story will be in three parts. Or four... if my inspiration decides to return at the last second.

* * *

Fourteen miles down the road he appeared out of thin air on the back seat, coughing blood. It was a wonder he has any blood left to cough up. It stained his shirts – front and back, oozing from the gaping wound in his chest.

Some force of instinct prompted Dean to slam his foot down on the brake pedal, the car screeching to a sudden stop in the middle of the road, two long lines of black, burnt rubber left behind. The archangel in the back seat slammed back against the leather, spat more blood, and lost consciousness. He slithered to the side, came to a stop mashed up against the door in a boneless slump that could never be achieved by someone who was faking it. Dean looked at Sam, saw the look of gobsmacked 'what the fuck' he's sure is on his own face mirrored right back at him.

"Dude," Sam actually said it as they both twist and turn to look over the back of the front seat, "what the fuck?"

Dean shook his head. "I got nothing," he admitted. "I got less than nothing."

"We can't just do nothing. The guy was willing to die for us, Dean."

Practically had, suicidal attempt at fratricide and all. The only indication that Gabriel was still alive and kicking was the blood still slowly oozing from his chest, and the lack of burnt-out wings fanning out from his body in sooty patterns on the car interior.

"Dean," Sam prompted again.

"Alright, ok. I'm thinking." He actually wasn't, still stuck on '_holy shit, he's not dead_' and '_what the hell do I do with a half-dead archangel_' (and also a tiny little voice that was screaming '_he's getting blood all over my baby_!'). "What the hell do we do with a half-dead archangel?" Dean repeated the thought aloud, running a hand over the bottom half of his face. In the shock of it he didn't even remember that he was currently parked in the middle of a deserted highway.

"I don't know," Sam replied, clearly in no better state than he was. "Uh... Maybe we should get him to a motel?"

"Yeah. I really want to go to one of those again so soon."

"Do you have a better idea? Because I'm open to suggestions here."

"Ok... ok..." Dean couldn't think of anything better. "But if the next place we stop at includes a party of homicidal nutjobs we're buying a goddamn tent."

The next motel did not actually include any homicidal nutjobs. It did however have a sign outside that boasted free wireless and a mini-fridge stocked with complimentary soda. It did not have any available rooms with three beds. Sam sucked it up and checked them into a pair of queens, reasoning that he could always rock-paper-scissors Dean into sleeping on the floor.

In the two hours it had taken them to find the motel Gabriel hadn't shown any improvement. He came around just a bit when the brothers levered him out of the back seat, just long enough to voice a pained grunt, then fell back into complete unconsciousness as he was manhandled into the motel room.

For once the decor seemed to fit the mood, utilitarian, sombre rather than flashy. Sam was glad of it as he wiped tacky blood from his hands and sat down at the table with his laptop. He had no idea what he was doing, what he was looking for, but running a few basic searches was better than sitting there and doing nothing.

He opened the laptop and almost immediately the autoplay began, reminding him of the DVD still in the drive. Sam quickly ejected the disc and pushed it to the side. The disc was just more proof of why they should be helping the archangel, but that didn't mean he actually wanted to see what happened next. For all he knew it was mutable, would play differently every time – frankly he didn't want to find out.

Dean sat down on the other bed, the one that wasn't covered in aching, bleeding archangel, and glanced over at his brother. "You know, I used to think our lives were pretty weird as it was."

"What's weird about this?" Sam asked dryly. "We're only holed up in yet another crappy motel right in the middle of the end of the world, with a half-dead archangel who starred in his very own porno."

Despite himself Dean couldn't help but grin. "I kinda like how you just left out the whole running from Lucifer, kidnapped by pagan gods, gotta-catch-'em-all stuff."

Sam was silent for a moment. "Our lives are pretty damn weird."

"Anyway," Dean looked at the other bed and the crumpled, bloody figure on top of the covers. "At least we've got someone else on our side. Someone not dead."

"Yet."

"Yeah... yet."

In the end the best they can come up with is cleaning the wound. Dean cut the sticky, bloody shirt right down the middle, ripping the cotton through with the edge of a hunting knife while Sam looked through their sorely depleted first aid kit for clean gauze and liquid antiseptic.

It seemed weird and ridiculous to use antiseptic on an angel, but neither of them knew exactly what a stab-wound from an archangel's knife would do. The idea of a chest wound going septic, no matter what amazing healing powers archangels may or may not have, was not a good thing whatever species you happened to be.

Of course, once they'd started it seemed stupid not to finish the job. They used towels and water from the bathroom to clean the blood from Gabriel's skin, used Dean's knife to strip the rest of the ruined clothing from Gabriel's torso. Naked from the waist up the archangel looked too small and too fragile. The gauze pads Sam taped in place on top of the knife-wound and its exit point only made it look worse.

Taking the sudden down-time as an opportunity for research, Sam called Bobby and filled him in on the details of their new plan. At least the 'find the horsemen' part of it, the other part he didn't trust over the phone. He doubted that Lucifer was tapping phones, but sometimes it was better to be paranoid than dead.

The phrase '_better to be paranoid than dead'_ stuck in his head, repeating like a mantra. He wondered if that was what Gabriel used to think.

And since Gabriel was still alive, even if it was barely, Sam wondered if he still felt the same way.

When Gabriel came to for the first time only six hours later he found himself half-naked, on a stiff motel mattress and covered by a thick woollen blanket. The ceiling was incredibly boring, so he turned his head to the side to see an unmade bed. Just that small movement sent sparks of pain shooting through him.

A groan fell from his lips without his consent, and he blacked out for just a moment. When he forced his eyes open again he was looking right into the face of one of the Winchesters.

"What are you looking at?" Gabriel wheezed.

"Just checking to make sure you're still kicking," Dean replied, and pressed his palm, then the back of his hand, to Gabriel's forehead briefly. "You actually had a fever a couple of hours ago, it was pretty freaky."

"'Fraidy cat."

"You know, you're pretty mouthy for a dead guy."

"Don't you know?" Gabriel asked. He closed his eyes and suppressed a less than healthy cough, dredging up as much of a cheery tone as being three-quarters-dead would allow. "It'll take more than a little stabbing to kill me. I'm the zombie king of the undead angel legion."

"Whatever, your highness..." Dean was quiet for a moment. Then he added in a much softer tone; "Thanks. For, you know..."

"Attempted suicide? Don't mention it. Ever."

"Sure, whatever you say. But just between you and me, you suck at dying."

Gabriel's lips quirked upwards a little at that, but he'd already exerted himself too much. He sank back into unconsciousness, a slow slide that numbed some of the pain that throbbed at his core. He was alive, if not intact, and that was a whole lot better than he'd expected.

By the end of the week Gabriel was on the road to recovery. He peeked under the bandage taped to his chest to see how bad the damage was, and even with a week of healing the wound was still open and wet. He had a feeling it would never heal entirely, but whether the wound itself was permanent or whether it would just leave a nasty scar was nothing more than mystery. Gabriel had never heard of anyone, or anything, surviving a stab to the chest with an archangel's sword. His own survival was a small miracle that came down to milliseconds of timing. Just a heartbeat longer and he wouldn't have had a heartbeat at all.

His grace was severely diminished, his own blade missing. And he had a gaping, oozing wound right in the middle of his chest. Wonderful.

He sat propped up by pillows, leaning against the headboard. And as if that weren't enough of an indignity he was also dressed in a hoodie that had once belonged to Sam and thus needed to have the sleeves rolled up several inches just so he could find his hands in the masses of fabric. It was like wearing some new-age adaptation of a monk's robes, and Gabriel was not impressed with it. (Nor was he impressed with the fact that the brothers had played a very heated game of poker to decide which one of them would be giving up clothes. But he would rather pretend that had never happened than mention it and clue them in to the fact that yes, he had actually been awake to hear the debate.)

It was depressing to find himself unable to speed up his own recovery beyond a dulling of the pain. More so to find that he was incapable of just snapping his fingers and rearranging the world around him. If he wanted the damn TV remote he actually had to ask, for chrissakes. Several millennia of just doing whatever the hell he wanted, whenever he wanted, and he was now reduced to actually asking for the remote.

In a stroke of something that wasn't quite irony he found that the most depressing thing about his current condition was the fact that he was obviously a burden. He was slowing the Winchesters down, preventing them from moving on to the next hunt, from hunting down the next horseman and coming up with the next sheer-dumb-luck-saves-them plan.

"Look," he said (over the faint background noise of Cheryl telling Marco that it was Over between them), "you might as well just get your fluffy little tails in gear and speed on out of here. This is as good as it's going to get for now, kiddies. Forget the miracle-cure and get back on track."

He could tell just by the guilty look on Sam's face as the brothers exchanged looks that he'd hit at least somewhere close to the mark. It was harder to tell now, of course, when he couldn't just poke through their minds on a whim without losing the numbness that kept the gaping wound in his chest from shooting pain through his being.

"We have no idea what you're talking about." Sam said, just a hint of guilt hiding in the corner of his mouth.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "I'm slowing you down, you two slowpokes should have been half way to Tatooine by now, getting ready to take on the hutt."

"Actually, we're enjoying the break."

"Oh," Gabriel looked at Dean, eyebrows raised, "so you actually like sleeping on the floor then. My mistake."

"We were going to wait," Sam interrupts, just half a beat before Dean can open his mouth for a retort. Sam was always the honest one. "Until you could travel with us. Until you were better."

The archangel chuckled and the vibrations from the sound sent spirals and flutters of pain radiating out from his chest right down to the tips of his fingers. His lips twisted into a sarcastic smirk as, for the first time in a long while, he told the plain and honest truth; "Newsflash, boys. It's not getting any better than this."

"But you're healing," Sam protested.

"As a human." It hurt just to say the words, but Gabriel forced them out with a sardonic smile and a playful drawl. "My vessel is healing, but it's healing slow. My grace still has a whopping great hole right through the middle of it and that isn't just going to go away. I'm diminished. I'm as threatening to Lucifer as a piece of cheese to a mouse and just about as useful."

"What happened to being the zombie king of the undead angel legion?" Dean asked, just as dry.

"I said that?"

"You also suggested declaring yourself Christ and showing off the hole in your chest as 'stigmata'."

"... I talk a lot of shit. Point is you boys need to be moving along."

Dean didn't seem to have an immediate answer for that, which only gave Sam time to jump in again with his cow-eyes and creepily effective earnestness. "We're not leaving you behind. Gabriel, you saved us back there, you practically died helping us out. Sticking with you until you're healed is the least we can do."

Gabriel really hated those damn eyes. He sighed, raised both of his hands and let them drop again in a nonverbal 'what the hell'. "Well then strap me in and tie me down, boys."

"Sorry?"

"I'm not staying here," Gabriel said, using small, simple words to get his point across, "and you've made it clear you're not leaving without me. So strap me into the back seat and let's go."

Sam looked at Dean, and Dean looked at Gabriel, then back at his brother. He sighed. "Whatever, man." He pointed a threatening index finger at the archangel on the bed. "But if you throw up on my leather seats, you're toast."

"Hey, Dean. Eat me."

"Bite me, shorty."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes**: Thanks for the reviews! Feedback spurs quick updates, you know.

Coincidentally, the next part should be ready to go within the next 24 hours.

* * *

The back seat was surprisingly roomy, though it squeaked every damn time he moved and it was impossible to get entirely comfortable with the car rumbling around him. Gabriel was living life human-style, and it sucked ass. Every pothole and bump on the road – which he noticed that Dean did try to avoid – jolted up his spine and sent his wound to aching. He would literally kill for a bottle of vicodin, or a shot of morphine. Hell, assault for an aspirin was starting to look pretty good right about now.

Gabriel shifted in the back seat, rolled onto his back to look up at the roof of the impala. The shift prompted a small flurry of protests from the nerve endings in his back where the exit-point of the knife wound had only just closed up, pink, new skin still tender and easily aggravated.

Alice Cooper was pumping out of the speakers, the volume set at a level that made it comfortable background noise over the purr of the engine.

Somebody's stomach grumbled loudly. It was answered by another, separate growl.

"When your intestines begin talking to one another," Gabriel drawled from the back seat, "it's usually not a good sign."

His sarcasm was met with unimpressed silence. After a moment or two's pause he could hear Sam shift in the front seat. "There's meant to be a truck stop a few miles ahead," he said, "we could stop there."

"We're just a couple of hours away from our next stop."

"Dean, come on. The truck stop is two minutes away."

"Yeah," Gabriel added, ready to jump on board with anything that would get him out of the back seat for more than a few minutes, "come on, Dean. Stop for icecream, get the kid a sundae. Heck, get yourself one too. You deserve it."

"There might be pie," Sam suggested, appealing to Dean's selfish side.

"Think about the pie, Dean. Think about it hard." Gabriel paused a beat for effect. "Now think about going four more hours without that sweet flaky crust, and sticky, mouth-watering, delectable filling..."

"Great. I've got a couple of shoulder-puppets telling me to pull in at a truck stop." Despite the distinctly unenthusiastic tone, Dean dutifully pulled over and found a park outside the truck stop diner. They got some odd looks, mainly because Gabriel was still dressed in the ridiculously oversized hoodie, which died away as soon as they were seated at a booth by the window.

The menus were laminated sheets of paper printed on both sides. A limited range, but good enough considering the nature of truck stops and diners. Whether by sheer coincidence or not the dessert section listed 'chocolate fudge sundae' right beneath the 'hot apple pie with vanilla icecream'.

If it was at all surreal for either of the Winchester brothers to be sitting in a truck stop diner with a wounded and heavily impaired archangel they were doing a good job of hiding it. Of course, Gabriel reasoned as he pretended to look at the menu, they were used to keeping unusual company. It was the archangel himself who wasn't used to sitting in a truck stop diner with a couple of humans, hunters at that, who actually seemed comfortable in his (admittedly not very impressive at the moment) company.

The second the heavily made up waitress arrived to take their orders Gabriel was all smiles. He ordered dessert first with a cheeky grin and a quip about not living forever. "Carpe diem, live fast, eat dessert first. Life's too short for calorie counting."

"What the hell," Dean said moments later, folding his hands on top of the table. "I'll take a slice of that apple pie and a cup of the house blend."

Gabriel nodded at Dean in approval, then turned an expectant gaze to Sam, one eyebrow raised. The younger Winchester looked at the archangel, then at his brother, not sure whether to be amused or horrified at the similar expressions on their faces. He relented with a sigh, dropping his menu into the centre of the table. 'Carpe diem', apparently the battle to save mankind was a good excuse to forget healthy eating. "Alright, fine. Do you have any yogurt?"

"Dude." Dean looked disgusted. "Yogurt? We're eating dessert first and you pick yogurt?"

"There's nothing wrong with yogurt."

"Yeah, if you like sour milk and bacteria."

Feeling unduly pressured, Sam smiled apologetically at their waitress. "Can I get a bowl of plain vanilla icecream, thanks? And an orange juice."

The waitress scribbled his order down on her pad and left them with a smile and a 'be right out with that'. Gabriel watched her go, his gaze lingering briefly on the sway of her hips out of habit before snapping back to the pair of brothers sitting on the opposite side of the booth. He picked up one of the tiny packets of sugar-substitute from the disk on the table and started fiddling with it, contemplating the merits of doing sugar-shots. He looked across the table with a small smirk, sugar-packet dangling from his fingers. "You know, I can't say you struck me as the plain vanilla type, Sammy."

"O-ho, trust me," Dean chuckled, tapping his fingertips against the edge of the table to some inaudible beat, "Sam is definitely the plain vanilla type."

"Vanilla icecream," Gabriel continued as he carefully tore his sugar-packet open, "is instant cause for suspicion. In my long, varied and _very_ fulfilling existence, I've met few people who liked vanilla icecream enough to have it on its own. And let me tell you, none of them were boring people."

"Ok," Sam said, clearly not getting where this was going, "so we've established that I'm not boring..."

"We've opened the possibility," Gabriel paused to pour the sugar from the packet straight onto his tongue, "that you may in fact be a transvestite dominatrix."

Sam choked. "What?!"

"Only kinky bastards choose vanilla, Sam."

Spluttering seemed to be the only response Sam could think of. "Screw you," he managed finally. And not very effectively.

"Right here?" Gabriel's smirk turned into an outright evil grin, "why, Sam. How daring."

"You know," Dean said, looking decidedly devious, "there was that whole screwing around with a demon thing, and the sucking down blood like you were a kid in a candy shop."

"Dean!" Sam looked scandalised.

"That S'n'M librarian chick back in Tulsa."

"It's always the quiet ones," Gabriel nodded, tearing open another sugar packet.

Sam glowered at them both as the waitress arrived carrying their orders. He waited until she'd gone, dug his spoon defiantly into his bowl of plain vanilla icecream, and then said very clearly; "I hate you guys."

Two weeks after Gabriel had first materialised in the back seat, after skulking around motel rooms and spending ridiculous amounts of time lying in the back of the impala (and getting far too acquainted with the vicious side-effects of his current condition), Gabriel was ridiculously happy when he managed to switch the channel on the car radio without touching it.

With just a little extra concentration the radio snapped from the classic rock hits of the 60s, 70s, and 80s to an obnoxious country cover of a contemporary pop song.

Dean's immediate reaction was to glare at the radio suspiciously. "What the hell?" He switched the station back, only for it to jump right back to the country music station. He switched it back again. And the country music came back, louder. Gabriel chuckled evilly to himself in the back seat.

"Dude," Dean looked over his shoulder at the archangel. "Not funny."

Frankly Gabriel thought it was brilliant. It was improvement. It meant that his entire being wasn't beyond repair, just... damaged. Damaged was better than dead. Even so he switched the station back to the one it had been on before, closed his eyes and smiled. He had no idea how much of what he'd been before still existed and how much of his power had been burned away by Lucifer's blade. It was heartening to know that he at least retained some of what he'd once been.

He could still feel the ragged edges of a hole right through his middle; Invisible to the naked eye, intangible, he might have thought it was his imagination if only it didn't take so much effort to access a power that should have come as naturally as breathing.

The wound on his chest had closed up enough to stop oozing, and had begun to show signs that he'd soon be looking at a fresh, pink scar rather than a jagged, terrible scab. Gabriel kept the wound bandaged still – he didn't want to see it until he was certain it was as healed as it was going to get.

He pushed himself too far and split the scabs open again. Impatience might just be his downfall, Gabriel mused as he collapsed to the floor, involuntarily boneless against the worn, threadbare carpet. Heavy, thumping footsteps caused vibrations in the floor that shook him to the bone. Large, careful hands rolled him over and the concerned faces of two human hunters looked down at him.

"Well," Gabriel found himself saying aloud through the foggy haze of core-deep pain, "let's not try that one again."

He didn't quite catch what was said in reply, but secretly appreciated it when he was dragged up by two pairs of hands and manhandled onto the nearby single bed. Judging from the looks of things he'd managed to shift himself all of two metres.

"You're bleeding again," Sam informed him, looking down at him with an expression that mixed exasperation with downright peevishness. "So, congratulations. It looks like you've just set your own progress back a few days, and you managed to bust the microwave too."

"Huh." Gabriel hadn't noticed that, but now that he thought about it he did remember a vague popping noise as he had disintegrated briefly into the ether. That had probably been the very first clue that something was about to go horribly, terribly wrong with his experimental flight.

"That's all you've got to say?" Sam demanded, " just 'huh'? You could have killed yourself!"

"I think what Sam is trying to say," Dean interrupted, fishing out a new gauze pad from their freshly restocked first aid kit, "is that you –" he pointed down at Gabriel, "are grounded, mister. No flying for you."

"Yes, mother." Gabriel raised a hand to slowly peel off the tape holding the blood-stained bandage against his chest. "Am I losing privileges too? Have I been a bad, bad boy? Are you going to spank me?"

"Dude, is your default setting stuck on 'horny sleazebag' or something?"

"And how do we change it?" Sam added dryly, dabbing antiseptic onto the split in Gabriel's chest with a soaked ball of cotton wool. Despite the tone and the look on his face his touch was firm and gentle. Clinical, like it was something he'd done a billion times before. And considering the number of small, silvery scars that no doubt peppered both brothers, he probably had.

"Spank me," Gabriel retorted with a leer, "and find out."

"Shut up, Gabriel. Or we'll get really kinky and gag you."

"Save the coping mechanisms for later," Sam added, gently taping the new bandage in place. "There's a limit to how much creepy flirting I can take."

Caught out, Gabriel pouted just a little. "At least Dean plays along," he grumbled under his breath. Flirting, in his opinion, was a far better occupation of his time than thinking about how a two-metre flight had left him torn open and bleeding again. "Anyone ever tell you that you're no fun at all, Sammykins?"

Sam tossed the gear back into the first aid kit, a resigned, long-suffering look on his face. Much more teasing and Gabriel suspected that the cow-eyes would make a reappearance. He waited, conspicuously innocent, on the bed, and struck with careful precision when Sam opened up his laptop. A carefully directed thought (a small burst of pain from his freshly reopened wound) and the leering bass background of a hardcore bondage website blasted from the laptop speakers.

Sam slammed the laptop closed. He glared at Gabriel, stood, picked up his jacket from the back of his chair, and announced snippily; "I'll be at the library."

A few seconds later the motel door slammed shut. Gabriel adjusted himself on the single bed, inching back until his head was actually cushioned by the hard motel pillow. It sort of pissed him off that he was unable to snap his fingers and replace it with a much nicer, fluffier pillow. "So, Deano," Gabriel spoke up, listening to the hunter move around in the tiny kitchenette. "Now that the little woman is gone what's say you and I crack open a few beers and eat rainbow candy 'til you puke?"

"You want to see me puke?" Dean asked, and the archangel could hear the 'what the fuck' stamped on his face.

"You're not thinking about the bigger picture here." Gabriel clucked his tongue, sounding disappointed. "You'd be puking _rainbow_. You could do a helicopter shower in the bathtub. It'd be entertaining."

"Yeah. Until someone had to clean it up."

"Sam can clean it up. Come on... you know you want to."

"Dude, I don't want to puke rainbows in the bathroom."

"You're about to lose all of my respect for you as the fun Winchester. Beer, candy, a couple of guys in a dinky little motel bathroom, what's not to love about that?"

"You're kind of a freak, aren't you?"

"I've got a MasterCard in my back pocket," Gabriel sing-songed. "You can buy m&ms and sour hearts and caramel popcorn... Hell, I'll even spring for a bottle of Jack if you're not in the mood for beer."

Dean turned to look at him, arms crossed, one eyebrow slightly raised. "You seriously expect me to just drop what I'm doing and go out and buy a shitload of candy and booze so you can watch me get drunk and puke for your sick ideas of entertainment?"

Gabriel gave Dean his own pouty, over the top version of puppydog eyes. "I'm injured."

He counted how many seconds it took for Dean to wear down. He got to five before the hunter rolled his eyes and, looking disgusted with himself, held out a hand expectantly. "Gimme the damn card."

Gabriel handed over the credit card with a self-satisfied smirk, wondering how long it would take Dean to realise that it was actually one of his own. "There you go. Don't spend it all in one place."

"I'll get the beer," Dean told him, tucking the card away into a pocket, "and I'll get the candy. But I am not puking rainbows to make you feel better." With that he stalked away, keys to the impala in hand.

"Fine," Gabriel replied, still smirking, as Dean left the motel room, "puking optional. You big baby."

Fifteen minutes later Dean returned with a case of beer under one arm and a plastic bag full of brightly coloured packets of candy held in his hand. In that time Gabriel had managed to move himself from the bed to the table – the conventional way, with feet. He watched Dean dump the candy out onto the table and open the case of beer, twisting the cap off a bottle with practiced ease to drink half the bottle in one long draught.

"I always knew you weren't a lightweight," Gabriel commented as Dean passed him one of the bottles, the cap already off. He tore open one of the candy packets, approved of the choice of red liquorice bullets, and popped one into his mouth, mixing the taste with the bitter twist of beer.

The hunter sat down at the table opposite him, produced the MasterCard from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table towards Gabriel. "So when exactly did you swipe that? I don't remember Sam or me misplacing our wallets."

"Uh-uh-uh," Gabriel switched an index finger back and forth. "Just because I don't have any phenomenal cosmic powers doesn't mean I don't have any tricks left in the bag."

Dean shook his head. "Whatever, Houdini. Just don't mess with my credit score."

Gabriel chuckled, watching Dean down the other half of his beer. "Careful, kiddo. You came awful close to making a real, live joke there."

Two hours later when he came back to the motel room to find a mess of empty beer bottles and crumpled candy wrappers and a smirking archangel (with Dean nowhere to be seen), Sam decided not to ask. He got an answer – or part of one – anyway when he heard the sound of retching coming from the bathroom, then Dean's voice muttering "fuckin' rainbows".

He sighed. "I am never leaving you two alone again."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes**: Last part. Don't worry, still no slash. However, there is a significant increase in the use of text messaging.

* * *

They were driving again, in between stops and going over what little they knew. Gabriel was secretly very pissed off at his own lack of knowledge, his lack of awareness of the world around him, but confined himself to smart little verbal jabs and switching radio stations when the brothers got too annoying for him. Deep down he knew the prodding was just another of his so-called coping mechanisms; The back seat was beginning to feel way too comfortable for his liking, and the Winchesters themselves far too familiar. He was starting to like them way too much - more than he already had - to the point where the idea that either of them would sacrifice themselves to save the world was becoming more and more unacceptable.

Which in itself was unacceptable, considering just how powerful (and capable of stopping them) Gabriel wasn't.

The archangel was slumped in the passenger's side of the back seat, disgusted with the fact that the scar tissue on his back was bothering him. He was starting to think about singing show tunes just to see how long it would take to get Dean to crack. He mused on that thought for a minute or two, mentally compiling a list of Broadway's Most Annoying.

Half an hour later he was being threatened with having his vocal chords cut.

For the sake of sanity – not just his – Gabriel soon found himself being temporarily foisted off onto another hunter.

The only good thing about Bobby's house was the space. More than one room plus a great deal of 'back yard' meant that Gabriel didn't constantly need to be in the company of others. It meant he was free to putter around on his own, soaking in boredom and tentatively pushing the limits of his recovery one telekinetic step at a time.

If he missed being able to tease Sam and Dean twenty-four seven he didn't let on. And not even he was going to do much to piss off a temperamental, gun-toting, no-nonsense hunter like Bobby... even if said hunter was confined to a wheelchair and less fun than Sam on one of his bad hair days.

That said, he considered it a triumph of magnificent proportions when he was successfully able to send a text message using nothing but his mind.

* * *

Sam's phone buzzed in his pocket. He frowned at the screen, which told him he had a new text message from Dean. _'Wat r u wearing_?'

"Dude." Sam looked at his brother in disgust, "I'm sitting right here. If this is your idea of a prank you seriously need to rethink your strategy."

"What?" Dean looked back at him, a puzzled frown on his face, which only grew more concerned when Sam showed him the text. "Uh, that's great and all, Sammy. But maybe you should keep your personal texts to yourself from now on."

"You're the one who sent it."

"I think I'd know if I sent you a text telling you to take off your pants."

"What?" Now it was Sam's turn to look confused. He glanced down at the phone only to see that the words on the screen had indeed changed to _'take off ur pants'_. Half a second later the phone buzzed again. Warily Sam opened the new text.

_'Cn't wait to get in u, [heart] the Devil'_

For a split second Sam had the irrational fear that somehow Lucifer had actually got a hold of his phone number. A _;)_ appeared after the word 'Devil'. Sam sighed in disgust. "Gabriel," he said aloud.

"Gabriel wants you to take off your pants?" Dean asked, giving Sam a very weird look. (Sam suspected he was being purposefully obtuse.)

Sam ignored his brother and instead concentrated on typing a reply with his thumbs. '_Stop texting me, you pervert'_. He was about to hit send when he thought better of it and added '_we're about to talk to some important people, no distractions!_'

He thought better of that only after he'd already sent the text.

Exactly thirty seconds later Dean's phone shrilled obnoxiously in his jacket pocket. Sam watched him fish for it and flip it open to read the words that had popped up on the screen. His brother smirked and Sam had a sinking feeling that he'd just been zinged. "So," Dean said, "according to Gabriel you just told him you want to ride me like a show pony in the back seat of my baby."

"Gabriel," Sam replied, as calmly as possible while having quiet fantasies of drowning the archangel in Bobby's water tank, "is a douche."

Half an hour later Gabriel received a message from Dean. '_Dude_,' it said. '_Ur awesome_.'

The archangel chuckled to himself and left himself breathless, scar throbbing, just so he could make sure that Dean would find a snickers bar in his jacket pocket next time he checked his phone.

* * *

By the end of the week Gabriel had mastered the ability of short-distance flight. That naturally meant he could transport himself from one place to another a relatively short distance away without any negative repercussions, but that long-distances still seemed beyond him. He was largely using his newfound powers of flight solely to test his limits. He popped from room to room without any singular purpose, and annoyed Bobby the day he decided to test what volume of mass he could take with him... Which was how the couch wound up sitting outside in the rain for half an hour, and how Gabriel found himself forced to sit on the back porch with an ancient hairdryer when it turned out he lacked the ability to simply snap things dry.

He had also sent at least a hundred inappropriate text messages to the Winchester boys, and received several in response – some of them funnier (and angrier) than others. And one hastily snapped picture of someone's underwear-clad behind that he suspected had been taken in a public restroom.

The archangel had taken it upon himself to be the tension-breaker in the world of doom and gloom and one terrible sign after another. He knew full well the seriousness of every situation the boys got themselves into (and, miraculously, out of). So when he received a text one night that said simply '_Crowley here, has plan Goin with him'_ he threw away the witty one-liners and inappropriate jokes in favour of some sage advice; '_Take it with a grain of salt'_.

He doubted Dean would even notice the pun.

Hours later he was proved wrong. '_Ha ha_,' the message read. '_Salt lube_.'

Gabriel grinned. That had not been what he'd meant at all. '_Kinky :D'_

The seconds stretched on into minutes, long enough that the archangel thought that he wouldn't be getting a reply. '_Worried about Sam_.' The next message read, in a very different tone from the last one. '_Demons fuck with us too much. Angels fuck with everyone No offense._'

'_You do what you can. That's all you can do_.'

'_Wish Cas was here_.'

For a moment Gabriel didn't know what to say. He realised, in one static shock of clarity, that the Winchester's own rebellious angel (mark one) had indeed been missing for an inordinately long time. He was impaired, not dead, and had no right – no reason other than self-absorbed whining – not to have noticed. The brothers had the end of the world and an insane game of hide and go seek to keep themselves occupied, Gabriel had self pity. _Well, crap_.

The archangel decided against going with a trite 'do you miss him' and instead sent back; _'Little brothers... always getting themselves into trouble and needing us to save them_.'

_'Youre helping?_'

_'You wound me, Winchester_.'

_'excuse me for breathing, dickwings. What exactly have you been doing while we chase after snotflies?_'

_'Need some time. Still learning how to fly._'

Gabriel left it at that, bringing his attention back to the real world immediately after hitting the mental 'send' button . He wasn't sure he wanted to know what the hunter's opinion on his grudging admission was.

* * *

He sent Sam a bag of gummy bears, stolen from an experimental trip to the local grocery store. It was more than fun to watch the look of shock from the night-fill staff when he blinked into existence in the middle of the confectionery aisle, imagining them to be much the same when he calmly selected the bears before disappearing into thin air.

Everyone liked gummy bears, and Sam deserved a bit of good luck now and then.

* * *

The searing pain of it lanced straight through his being, burning from the tips of his fingers right down to his toes and everything in between. It was so thorough, encompassing the entirety of him, that it was only dimly that he recognised that his scar had burst. Again.

He could feel his body falling, a sense of vertigo making it seem like it was happening from a great distance. The archangel caught a glimpse of movement just before his eyes shut on him, a shocked face and a body frozen in time as someone tried to catch him before he hit the floor. He was unconscious before he could tell whether they succeeded or not.

* * *

The motel was just like a thousand others across the country. Neutral colours, furniture that was neither particularly old nor particularly new, water pressure that was tricky at best, and a TV with an option for pay per view porn.

It was a pit stop. A rest along the way because there were only so many nights you could spend sleeping in a car and not wind up with cramps.

Sam was at the table, a stack of newspapers pushed to the side and his laptop open in front of him. He frowned at the screen as if it was the source of all of his problems, and took careful pains to avoid thinking to deeply or too darkly about what the source of his problems actually was. A heavy silence had settled between him and Dean, neither brother willing to be the first to break it, so the buzz of his phone was unnaturally loud.

Sam opened the message, frowned even deeper, and held the phone up to show Dean. "Is this a reference to some kind of slang I don't know about?"

Dean looked at the phone, seemingly just as puzzled as Sam to see a photograph of a pigeon taking up the screen. "If it's slang for something then I'm drawing a blank. Maybe he's just messing with you?"

"What? So I'll sit here and try and figure out what the pigeon means?" On second thoughts, that sounded an awful lot like something Gabriel would actually do.

Dean chuckled. "You're totally thinking of googling that pigeon, aren't you?"

"I'm not going to google the pigeon."

A sudden burst of displaced air sent the newspapers to fluttering. Two figures, both looking the worse for wear, appeared out of thin air in the middle of the room. Both brothers were up and moving before it even registered who exactly their impromptu visitors were. Then Gabriel was falling, leaving Castiel to sway a little on the spot with reactions clearly not quick enough to be of any help.

It was like déjà vu. The archangel fell to a crumpled heap on the floor, unconscious, blood slowly blooming in patterns through the cotton of his t-shirt.

"Homing pigeon," Dean muttered to himself, and under different circumstances the pun might have been just a little bit funny. He crouched down beside the fallen archangel and pressed his fingers against the pulse-point at Gabriel's neck. Stupid, because he wasn't even sure that angels required a pulse in order to live. Nonetheless a pulse still beat against his fingertips, drumming to a steady beat.

He looked up to see that Sam had already steered Cas to a seat on the edge of a bed. The blue-eyed angel looked disorientated, but largely unharmed. If he was hurt, it wasn't physical, and for the moment that meant Gabriel took precedence.

"Sam, I'm going to need the first aid kit."

"Way ahead of you," Sam replied, already fishing the kit out of their bags. He passed it to Dean, who had already sliced through the archangel's shirt to see just how badly he'd busted himself up this time.

"Y'know," Dean said, swiping the freshly reopened scar with a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic, "this showing up and bleeding on the floor thing is starting to get old."

"Gabriel was assumed to be dead," Castiel spoke, deadpan and dry. "That is not longer the case. He was already bleeding when he showed himself in front of the angels guarding me."

Sam sighed. "So we can assume that now the angels know he's out there they'll be trying to kill him too?"

"He looks as if someone has already tried to kill him. Lucifer, if I'm not mistaken."

"You're not."

Castiel looked at the archangel on the floor, then back at Sam. "You will need to fill me in on what has happened since I have been gone."

When Gabriel finally dragged himself up from the fog of unconsciousness he found himself experiencing the dubious pleasure of being nauseas for the first time he could accurately remember. It was not a fun sensation. He groaned, realised belatedly that the feeling was being aggravated by the fact that he was lying on something that was moving, and finally recognised the feel of the impala's back seat against his back.

"Sleeping beauty's awake." Gabriel turned his head just enough to see Dean's eyes watching him in the rear-view mirror. "How'd you sleep, princess?"

"Peachy. I think I'm going to throw up on your car." He paused a beat. "It's an interesting sensation, one I hope to never, ever feel again."

"Cas is fine. What?" If Gabriel had to guess he'd say that Sam had just given Dean a weird look. "The guy did save him, maybe he'd like to know how Cas was doing."

"Whatever, dude. I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking it."

"How would you know what I was thinking, Dean?"

"You looked like you were thinking it, ok?"

"You two ladies," Gabriel interrupted, smirking despite how crappy he felt, "are just like a couple of gossipy hens. It's adorable. And kind of disgusting."

"Screw you."

The archangel had to chuckle of the predictable response from the elder Winchester. "Maybe when I'm not so sore, angelfish."

* * *

Strangely enough though Sam snickered to himself at what must have been a very interesting expression on Dean's face, Dean himself couldn't seem to think of anything to say.

Gabriel woke up after a night of lying on a stiff motel mattress feeling sore, tired, and yet strangely refreshed. He rolled onto his side and got a face full of sunshine. Somehow it didn't bug him at all.

It occurred to him that there may be something to this hero stuff after all.

But as long as he still had the physical reminder of the gap that ran through his grace it would be impossible to get him to admit it.


End file.
